


mirror mirror

by paladinpalindrome



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Angst, Gen, a storm of swords spoilers, slight rape/non-con reference
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-01
Updated: 2013-05-01
Packaged: 2017-12-10 02:26:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/780703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paladinpalindrome/pseuds/paladinpalindrome
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Sansa doesn't know why the queen hates her so much. It can't be as simple as the fact that she is the daughter of a traitor. </i>
</p><p>Five times someone saw Cersei reflected in Sansa Stark, and one time that Cersei saw it herself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	mirror mirror

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing, and like Jon Snow, I know nothing. Any recognizable dialogue is kindly borrowed from the HBO show. The plus one segment contains a reference to events in A Storm of Swords that have not been portrayed on the show yet. 
> 
> inspired by this lovely prompt here: http://asoiafkinkmeme.livejournal.com/14808.html?thread=9155032#t9155032

Ned catches the haughty set of his daughter's face, eyes narrowing under braids woven in the southern style across her brow, a far cry from the crown that will sit there one day. She is growing older, taller, but perhaps not wiser, and there is more than one reason for the tug in his chest at the thought that his daughter will one day be queen. 

Arya is frowning again, clumsily beating her knife into the table as she bites back at her elder sister. He hates hearing his daughters snipe at each other, remembering too clearly the look of disgust on the Queen's face when she told her twin to find their little brother in Winterfell. He pictures how that expression would look on Sansa's face sometimes, in growing moments of frustration and doubt when he wishes for home and for Catelyn and for Bran to be whole again. Lately he hasn't had to imagine it at all. 

He hears the golden pealing of her laugh, and for a moment is comforted. It's loud and genuine, not the careful ladylike tittering she lets out whenever Joffrey is near. That boy is dangerous, if the events on the kingsroad are anything to go by, and Ned dreads his assent to the throne almost as much as he dreads the thought of a royal wedding.  
 _  
I was also trained to kill my enemies, Your Grace._

 _As was I._  
  
He thinks Sansa should learn, too. The north defends itself. 

\--

Varys doesn't speak to the Stark girl but he sees her, as he sees everything else. He wonders if he's the only one who's made the comparison, amidst all the sharp and sly eyes of the capitol. He is a veteran, the spider they can't kill, and his memory is sharp as a sword on a whetstone. He thinks of another too-bright girl, golden and lovely, feet dancing in eagerness to be a bride, before her hopes were dashed, broken, buried.

The Queen's face set faster, he thinks; she didn't take so long to harden into stone. Any mourning she did for the death of her hopes she did quietly, behind a hard smile and icy eyes. All it takes is one look in the Stark girl's eyes to know her; one could drown in the anguish there. 

Varys moves along unnoticed in the shadow of the Iron Throne, remembering another young girl, another poor player.

\--

Sansa doesn't know why the queen hates her so much. It can't be as simple as the fact that she is the daughter of a traitor. In her weakest moments she tells herself it is only that; she can't bear to think of what other sins the Lannisters are stacking against her. 

Then the blood came, the horrible, traitorous blood, and she'd never felt more betrayed by her own body, or any less safe. 

There had been a moment, after, in the queen's room, when her words felt like the kindness that she had wanted them so desperately to be. She wanted warmth; she wondered how the south could feel so cold, when her mother's hands always touched so warm upon her neck when they braided her red, red hair back home in the north. 

What she gets is a warning.

 _Shouldn't I love Joffrey?_ she asks, and for a moment the ice in the queen's eyes feels like a mirror. 

_You can try, little dove_ , she says, softly as she's not heard the queen speak before.

She hears the words again in the keep, red wine in hand and the sounds of battle echoing around from some far away place outside, and in the stifling room of weeping women she's never felt more cold.

 _Little dove_. It's become a mockery now. Even worse, it feels like a threat. 

Sansa's never felt less like a wolf. She tries to forget that lions are hunters too. 

\--

Somewhere outside that room, Shae knows men are dying, but for the moment she doesn't quite feel fear. 

There's anger though, as the queen drawls about sacking and rapes, not discreet enough to hide the biting words from the rest of the room. _War levels us all_ , Shae thinks, with a stab of panic at the thought of what that might mean for someone who is already so very low. Sansa looks horrified, as if every word from the woman's golden mouth is driving a dagger deeper into her chest. 

The woman looks like she's enjoying it. 

_It was_ expected _of me_ , the queen had seethed, wine and bitterness dripping through the gaps in her armor. There's something wild, something trapped radiating from her now, and it's all focused on Sansa, as if she can cast down some demon through this frightened girl. 

_Your birth won't save you either_ , Shae thought, marveling at Tyrion's sister, beautiful and magnificent in her cruelty. _Has it ever saved you before?_

\--

 _She looks tired_ , Margaery thinks. _Like the queen. She looks tired._

Sansa smiles too quickly, as if she can only hold her mask for so long. She latches onto Margaery's kindness like a drowning woman, desperate, slippery, shaking. _You give yourself away_ , she wants to say, but although she's a potential ally, she is not Sansa's teacher. As much as she feels for the girl she's too preoccupied batting lion muzzles away to take her under her wing. 

She's had her grandmother to mirror all her life, to know when to smile slowly and when to flatter and when to bite. She knows her brother too, far too well, and so Margaery knows how to keep a secret. But Sansa's brothers are dead or fighting a losing war, and her grandmother is probably buried up north, deep and silent in an icy tomb where her father should have been. Sansa's secrets swim up through her eyes; she begs if not with her words, then with her body, in the way she leans closer to Margaery and stiffens in the presence of the queen.

The queen. 

_She won't let me leave_ , Sansa had said, but it wasn't love that kept her here. Margaery wonders what ghosts of herself the queen finds in Sansa, what lies in the wells of bitterness where she paints the words she throws at the girl. 

Margaery's been taught how to sweeten with roses and when to prick with her thorns, and when she's alone she thanks the seven that she wasn't thrown to the lions the way Sansa was, or bound in a cage of antlers as a hapless young girl.

She will be queen, and she will be better. 

\--

She'd asked Jaime about her when they first came to Winterfell, pretending she was using the girl as a distraction to stifle the ire that burned in her twin's eyes at the sound of her husband's voice.

 _What of her?_ he'd asked. 

_Nothing_ , she'd said. She'd imagined it then. 

Cersei calls the girl by anything but her name, even alone, even in her head. _Little dove_. It had been a casual slip the first time, almost charmed against her will by the girl's bright smile in Winterfell. She slid the words out before she could think of how swiftly the girl's little white teeth cut through her, peeling back the years to the memory of another joyful young girl, another bride-to-be. She smooths the name onto the girl like a crown, before another, more familiar name takes its place. 

_Good_ , she thinks afterwards, _doves are lion's prey._

Months later, she wraps the maiden cloak around the Stark girl's shaking shoulders. Her own cutting smile is for Tyrion's benefit; it's hard to say which of the spouses wants this marriage less. 

_Good_ , she thinks. 

She won't get any kindness, either.


End file.
